bug#25724: sed (bug or wrong command ?)

[Assaf Gordon]

tag 25724 notabug
close 25724
stop

Hello,

On Tue, Feb 14, 2017 at 10:16:37AM +0000, Enrico Magrì wrote:
> I would like to insert new line at the begin of my txt file and in this line to 
> insert the word “ciao”.
[...]
> C:\config>sed "1,1s/^/ciao \n /g" comandi-capture.txt
>
> ciao n capture CAP-IP-85.205.221.241 type raw-data interface OUTSIDE 
> circular-buffer match ip any host 85.205.221.241

[...]
> I tried also with SED of CYGWIN and all woks correctly:
>
> $ sed "1,1s/^/ciao\n/g" comandi-capture.txt
>
> ciao
>
> capture CAP-IP-85.205.221.241 type raw-data interface OUTSIDE circular-buffer 
> match ip any host 85.205.221.241


[...]

> The version of sed is the following:
>
> C:\Users\enrico_vf>sed --version
> GNU sed version 3.02


First,
sed version 3.02 is 19 years old. (!)
It is highly recommended to upgrade to a newer version.
sed version 4.4 was released just this month.

I'm quite certain that the 'sed' you use on cygwin is newer than
the 'sed' you use directly in cmd.exe.


Second,
Instead of replacing the beginning of the line,
consider using the 'i' (insert') command.
The following should work even on sed-3.02:

  sed -e '1i\' -e 'ciao' comandi-capture.txt

To learn more about this syntax, see the 'i' command in this section:
https://www.gnu.org/software/sed/manual/sed.html#Other-Commands




As such I'm closing this ticket, but discussion can
continue by replying to this thread.

regards,
- assaf